Unstoppable , livre ebook

MANTHAN SHAH

UNSTOPPABLE
How Youth Icons Achieve Extraordinary Things
PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
Introduction
1. Grit and Perseverance
2. Courage
3. Creativity and Innovation
4. Hard Work over Talent
5. Emotional Intelligence
6. Growth Mindset
7. Networking
8. Leadership
9. Confidence
10. Giving Back
Footnote
7. Networking
Notes
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
Copyright
EBURY PRESS
UNSTOPPABLE
Manthan Shah is a young author, podcaster, athlete, student and Schwarzman Scholar.
He is a two-time Under-18 SGFI Indian Table Tennis National Champion, and he won medals for India at the Pacific School Games 2015 in Adelaide, Australia. He hosts Planet Impact , the podcast that shares the stories of young changemakers with its 10,000 listeners.
He is set to pursue a master s degree in global affairs at Tsinghua University, Beijing. He was a Dean s List student and Global Citizenship awardee at the SP Jain School of Global Management, Sydney. He has a diploma in creative writing from Symbiosis College of Distance Learning, Pune.
He had the privilege of meeting HH Pope Francis in a private sitting at Vatican City in 2019 and meeting HH the Dalai Lama at Dharamshala in 2018.
Manthan Shah is from Ahmednagar, Maharashtra. Unstoppable is his first book.
To all the young people who want to do something extraordinary.
To celebrate the people who are shaping our communities, 25 per cent of all author royalties will be donated to local non-profits, including Snehalaya.org .
Introduction
Ajay was born into a middle-class family. From the age of twelve, he was enrolled in several tuition and coaching classes. He played sports and participated in debates. Anything less than topping the class was seen as a failure. After completing his twelfth standard, his parents insisted that he pursue engineering or medicine. He chose engineering. After graduation, he worked in a corporate job for a couple of years. Dissatisfied, he applied for a master s programme at a college in the US, and now he is working hard to find a job there.
Anam Hashim was born in Kanpur, India. Her mother was forced into a second marriage with a drug lord. Anam grew up in abusive circumstances. At seventeen, she ran away to Pune to live with her aunt. Anam loved bikes; she taught herself stunt riding. She dropped out of college and focused on riding bikes, and she soon became one of the best motorcyclists in the country.
Manthan was six years old when he discovered his love for table tennis. By the time he was eight, he was beating players twice his age. His family moved to Pune to take advantage of the better training facilities there so he could hopefully become a national champion and win international medals for India. He was home-schooled for a few years, yet his academic performance was above average in school and high school. But then, conforming to the norms of society, he left table tennis to pursue a safer career. Now, studying to earn a business degree, he experiments with both conformist and non-conformist routes to becoming successful in life.
The first story is a hypothetical one. It illustrates the typical path laid by society. It is a safe route for most of us. Broadly, in terms of life s milestones, it sounds like the standard path, but when you scratch the surface, many individuals don t find fulfilment in it. They often find themselves asking, Is this all there is to life or is there more to it?
The second is a real story. Anam grew up in a patriarchal family. She was a woman in what was deemed to be a man s industry. She did not get there by following the path of others; she had to create her own path. I wanted to see if her experience was unique or part of a larger trend. What I found showed me a new approach to finding happiness and success.
The third is my story. While I am not as successful as I would like to be yet, I have observed that many who have done exceedingly well have not followed the path laid out in the first story.
Ajay is a typical conformist, following the rules of society. Anam was a non-conformist. While, finally, I have travelled both the conformist and non-conformist routes.
We live in harsh times. On a macro level, India is one of the unhappiest places on the planet. In 2020, India ranked 144 out of 153 countries in the World Happiness Report. 1 Now in the bottom ten globally, India also saw one of the largest drops in the happiness index between 2008-12 and 2017-19 due to a combination of economic, social and political stresses. 2
With regard to education, due to lack of professional skills, only 46 per cent of Indian graduates are employable. 3 The degrees leave a sense of dissatisfaction within the students. The education system lags behind many in the world, and it doesn t train students to prosper in their professional lives.
If we look at employment, due to the absence of jobs in the formal sector, the informal sector absorbs large masses of workers. The portion of informal workers participating in the workforce has been increasing and now stands at around 92 per cent. 4
In terms of income, India ranked 150 out of 194 economies in terms of GDP per capita. 5 The per capita income in India is Rs 1.45 lakh per year. 6 The average salary in India is incredibly low, even after individuals put many years into education. Many of my friends who graduated as engineers in India have had a tough time finding a reasonably paying job, which impacts their self-esteem.
The suicide rates in India are among the highest in the world 7 and on the rise among students, 8 particularly in the youth between the ages of fifteen and twenty-nine years, especially among females. 9
Mrugesh Vaishnav, president of the Indian Psychiatric Society, says, Stress, anxiety disorder, depression, personality disorder-all these result in mental illness that leads a student towards suicide. This happens when the students are not familiar or satisfied with his or her surroundings. 10
Inequality is another factor contributing to discontent in the country. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the richest 10 per cent of Indians owned around 80 per cent of the country s wealth, while the lesser privileged 60 per cent Indians owned less than 5 per cent. 11
India is among the top five nations in terms of number of billionaires. The number of billionaires in India surged by 330 per cent over the last decade, outpacing the global average growth of 68 per cent, and the momentum will continue over the next decade. 12
The new money dollar-billionaires such as Vijay Shekhar Sharma of Paytm and Ritesh Agrawal of Oyo Rooms did not earn their success by following the conventional path. Ritesh Agrawal was just twenty-four when his net worth was estimated at $1.1 billion (Rs 7800 crore). 13 Vijay Shekhar was thirty-eight when he broke into the billionaires list. While these two are the outliers, they must have taken some non-conformist decisions to achieve the great things that they did.
I often ask myself, how do young individuals who face everyday struggles crack these ceilings and achieve something great in life?
In general, South Asian society believes that success and happiness come from conforming to certain rules. The Indian school system requires one to learn whole textbooks by heart and recreate them in tests. The textbook then replaces the creative heart of a young adult. Following the norm, the majority of students choose engineering, medicine, law or charted accounting programmes in college to abide by their parents wishes and follow their friends choices.
One of the outcomes of this is that there has been an increase in mental health disorders, personal insecurities and feelings of isolation. The void that this generation feels comes from not understanding where one belongs in society.
There is a monotony in career and life patterns, with the majority trying to score the best possible grades in the tenth and twelfth standards, aspiring to work at consulting firms, tech companies, banks or starting their own business, then marrying and having kids. That s what society pushes one to do. The promise of a better future is prominent, yet the results are of discontent. There is no breathing space for those who feel or identify themselves as different.
Teens who are unable to speak English, come from a rural setting or do not follow the same customs as their fellow students are often bullied. One is often ridiculed for being too thin, too fat, too smart, not smart enough, too Indian or not Indian enough, etc.; patriarchy prohibits girls from wearing the clothes they want to wear; one s complexion is deemed to be more important than one s intellect; permission must be granted to see friends. One therefore tends to lose oneself in conforming to what society thinks .
There is also a lack of meritocracy: you must know someone to get a job, admission in a private college or even fix an arranged marriage. If you do not, you are marginalized. When you graduate and start looking for a job, you may not be able to find good opportunities. Moreover, you need to come from a certain family background and identify your beliefs in a certain way to be happy. Often, who your family is becomes your matrix of success.
All this noise makes it difficult to understand what real success means for a young fifteen- to twenty-five-year-old in this society. How does one achieve it?
One of the first persons I spoke to when I was seeking direction for this book was Dr Achyut Godbole, a polymath and the author of twenty-seven books. He gave me a great insight: all the self-help and motivational books talk about the top 0.1 per cent of people in society such as Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. However, it is difficult to be like them. Given the structure of Indian society, 80 per cent of the people simply do not have the resources, infrastructure and external support to achieve what these top 0.1 per cent have achieved. So, t